My mother was very loyal to family. Her own family immigrated to the United States in the early nineteen hundreds. When she married, she moved across the United States from California to New England but still kept her ties with the left coast. My father never drifted far from family. He raised his children in the same town in which his parents raised him since the age of five. Together they bore four children in less than seven years and then a last one over twelve years later.

A niece wrote me recently, “I miss the times when grandma was alive not only because she was a good grandma, but because she kept you all together.” She is right; Mum did a great job at keeping us together. The niece goes on to say, “I miss when the ... family actually liked being around each other or at least faked it.” If we did fake it (and I won't argue the point one way or another – you can decide), we haven't done anything many families have not done before us.

Several of my siblings were starting their own families when I was still a child. Our father died when we were 31, 29, 25, 24 and 12 years old. Shortly after, our mother & I moved to a small cottage and we started rotating holidays between the siblings' homes because entertaining in our cottage was not practical. When I was thirteen Christmas was at my oldest sister's house and I witnessed a telephone argument between her and my mother where my mother kept saying, “No. I am not going to leave Emma home. If I can't bring her, I'm not coming either.” I know a thirteen year old is not nearly the same as a six year old but I can't imagine a parent going off to celebrate Christmas while leaving her thirteen year old home alone. And no, I wasn't a kleptomaniac, smelly, particularly loud, disruptive or any of the myriad reasons you could think of to engender desertion. Mum didn't, of course, leave me alone but I also didn't enjoy the holiday because only one person wanted me there.

Nine years later Mum died. I was her final caretaker. She had been sick for a few years so I was back and forth between college, work and home. I had not yet fully moved out. When I rushed back to work after my prolonged leave of absence, the two oldest siblings not only liquidated our mother's belongings from the house but also mine. There were a few things of value but those could be replaced. The achievement awards, photographs, and little mementos of childhood can not.

I recently inherited a copy of our family tree written by the oldest sibling for our grandmother. It was written approximately three years after our father's death. I am the only one living at the time who is not on it.

These days we are only brought together by death. The youngest child, but me, is dead from cancer. Our middle sibling had a stroke many years ago and can barely communicate. The second oldest is only seen at funerals. The oldest only calls to announce death or impending death. I jump every time my caller ID shows her number. I would be no less alarmed if a man in a dark hooded cape carrying a scythe knocked on my door.

There is a break in the family cloud though. Loved ones I've lost but could not get information about from immediate family (they hoard information as if it were a commodity) are finding me and being found through social networking and the internet. I did learn our mother's lesson and do value family so these reunions are poignant, yet exciting. Also, in banding together we have other means of circumventing the cone of silence and misinformation.

What do you think? Do we owe our elders the respect to jump when called, disappear when asked and obey the rules they set for family or can we create our own rules? Are we obligated to be controlled by family simply because they are family?